Argonaut
by Syrinx
Summary: This is the dawn of a journey. Brad. Set between Integrity and Oath.


Argonaut  
By Syrinx  
Rating: PG-13 (for language)  
Summary: This is the dawn of a journey.  
A/N: This fits in between Integrity and Oath, because I tend to be all over the place when I write continuations of anything.

He knows that she uses speed dial. He also knows that he's the first number on her phone. He hasn't known how to feel about this for a while, but at a certain point he feels like emergency response, or poison control. Always there when needed. So at a certain point, when she calls and he answers at some ungodly hour in the morning, he's not surprised when it's yet again another emergency.

"I need two stalls," she says, rapid fire, like she's been drinking coffee for hours straight. At night. It's – he looks at the bedside clock – 4am now.

"What?" he manages, rubbing his face with the heel of his hand and rolling onto his back, disoriented and not even trying yet to keep up with her.

"Two stalls," she repeats. "Preferably in the stallion barn, but I'll take what I can get at this point."

"Can you explain to me why?" he asks, grunts as he sits up and turns on the light. It's blinding, flooding the empty room with merciless light.

The line goes silent and then she says it, almost like a whisper: "I'll explain when I get there."

"When is that?"

"Fifteen minutes?"

"Shit, Ashleigh," he groans and throws the covers off, staggers out of the bed.

"I know," she says apologetically. "I'm sorry."

The phone goes dead. He isn't sure if the connection broke or if she simply hung up, but he doesn't exactly care. Instead he dresses as fast as his sloth like movements allow and leaves the house in time to see her headlights cutting across the farm's drive. He watches her drive straight to the stallion barn, the Whitebrook trailer kicking up dust behind the massive truck that pulls it, and when he sees her in the lone outdoor lamp above the stable door he's met with a haggard woman who looks so torn it should give him pause.

Instead he's kind of pissed off.

"What the hell, Ashleigh?" he asks, helping her undo the latches and lower the ramp. "Could this not wait?"

"I wanted to do it now," she says by way of explanation. "Did you get the stalls ready?"

He snorts at that, like he had time to magic himself to the stud barn and prepare stalls with fifteen minutes notice, for Christ's sake.

"No," he says, letting the ramp drop the few inches to the ground with a clank. She straightens and pushes the hair of her face, giving him a dissatisfied look that makes him want to tell her off in the worst way imaginable. In fact, he can't quite help himself from doing just that.

"You're lucky I answered the damn phone," he tells her. "Right now, I should have told you to go the fuck back to Whitebrook and wait, but since you're here now, congratulations. You get to stand in for the hired help this morning."

She bit her lip for a second and then looked away from him, nodding. "I'm sorry."

"Again."

"Yes," she sighs. "I am. I think I saw a couple of paddocks open. We can put them out for the morning."

"Fine," he says, suddenly too tired to deal with it anymore. "What animals are these?"

She looks at him, her lips tightening almost imperceptibly, like answering the question is the hardest thing he's ever asked of her.

"It's Pride and Mr. Wonderful."

"What?"

"You heard me," she says, walking into the trailer. "I'd like to get them out of here. They're polite, but we're pushing it."

_You're pushing it_, he thinks, but he doesn't say anything yet. Not yet. He's starting to suspect that she's finally suffered some mental break, has finally let it all get to her. Mike is back; he knows Mike is back. Where the hell is he to stop his wife from loading up Whitebrook's prized stallions and shipping them herself in the dead of night? These are the things that are running through his head as he watchs Ashleigh back Pride down from the trailer.

All seventeen hands of the chestnut stallion stand in front of him, and he still thinks she's lost it. He goes in and unties Mr. Wonderful, runs a hand down the smaller stallion's flaxen mane and backs him down the ramp. Both brothers act like everything is utterly normal, stand in their shipping equipment and gaze at their surroundings.

He takes off the stallion's shipping boots and tosses them in the general direction of the trailer. Then he leads the way to the empty paddocks. It's a warm autumn night, warmer than usual for the season, but the stallions are always kept indoors for the night. Under lock and key. And camera surveillance. The farm will be waking soon, so he justifies letting the stallions graze until he can get stalls made or can talk Ashleigh into taking them back home.

Ashleigh follows him silently, her feet and the sounds of hooves crunching against gravel is the only sound in the night. He motions to her to take the nearest paddock for Pride and he walks a little further with Mr. Wonderful, letting the stallion go in a paddock neighboring Townsend Pride's.

Coiling the lead in his hands, he watches Mr. Wonderful stand next to the fence, looking around him with a bewildered calm he respects. He can see himself in the stallion just now, lost for words, probably a little disgruntled, going with the flow because doing anything else is a losing battle. The poor thing gets roused out of sleep, dragged to an unfamiliar location, told nothing of the circumstances…yes, it all feels too similar. When he feels Ashleigh's presence next to him, he feels like he's representing himself as well as the stallions with the questions he's going to ask.

"Do you feel like telling me what's going on?" he asks, leaning his weight against the fence and watching Mr. Wonderful finally lower his head to the grass in a cursory survey of what's available. The stallion takes a sample of the bluegrass and digs in.

"Can we sit?"

"We can when you tell me what you're doing," he suggests.

She just nods and says, simple as ever, "I'm getting a divorce."

He is not surprised. Not surprised at the statement, or at the way his stomach falls and twists at the news.

"Don't say you're sorry," Ashleigh tells him, pinning him with a dark glare over her shoulder as she makes her way up to the stud barn. He moves to follow after a beat. She walks into the stud barn and past the horses, gives the inquisitive Lord Ainsley a rub on the nose on her way to the office. She falls exhaustedly into one of the chairs, and he leans against the doorjamb, can't stop looking at her if he tried.

"Don't say I told you so, either," she suddenly says, looking up at him, accusatory. The anger there, simmering under the surface. She wants him to poke at her, to give her a reason to spill everything out until she can't find anything else to wonder at. She wants a fight. Probably will fight with anyone, over anything, and he knows that she's chosen him. They have a history in fights, a whole lifetime of epic battles waged over nothing. He's a good choice, he has to admit, but he's not up for it. So he stands and watches her, waiting for her to make a move.

"I brought Pride and Mr. Wonderful here," she says, skipping over all of the details, which is good because he doesn't want to know. "Because I own them with you, and my parents don't have facilities for them. I thought they belonged here."

"They're welcome," he says simply. "I have the space."

She only gazes across the office, giving it a vacant stare. "I thought, for the time being, I could keep Wonder, Princess, Honor, and the weanling with my parents."

"They don't have facilities for the weanling," he says casually, not reminding her so much as offering yet another stall. "I'll take her here, if that's what you want."

Ashleigh leans into the chair cushions and looks up at the ceiling, then over at him. She narrows her eyes and looks at him, like she's trying to see inside of him somehow. He stays where he is, lets her look.

"I know," she says. "Eventually, I guess they'll all come here."

He doesn't say anything to that either. She's anticipating him, and he knows it. They both realize that he'll push for that result. He is nothing if not persistent.

"Where's Chris?" he asks, momentarily worried that in her rush she's forgotten her daughter. There's no telling now, not without knowing what she's been doing the past week in which she has so neatly avoided him. He doesn't want to know. Not now, probably not for a while. If ever.

"She's with my parents," she says and her voice breaks in a halfhearted attempt at bitter laughter. Ashleigh never did bitter well, he remembers. It always came out pained, and now he knows she's too wounded to care. "You must be able to tell, Brad."

"I wouldn't know what you're referring to," he says.

The angry light in her eyes dies just a little, glistens sadly when she realizes he isn't going to play the old game. "You can reach me at my parents'," she mumbles. "Indefinitely."

She stands up and tries for a smile that breaks somewhere in the process and becomes a shattered mess across her face. She looks like she's going to start weeping, and for a horrified second he wonders if she's going to fall right into him.

"Ashleigh," he says, and that brings her out of it, snaps her right to attention before she can crumple inward.

"I'm going to go," she says, pointing to the aisle. "I need to return the trailer."

He nods. Says nothing. There is, he is thinks to himself, nothing to say.

"You're right about the weanling," she says, and he thinks of Wonder's new filly. She hasn't been named yet, and now he thinks he knows why. "I'll be back with her later today, maybe around ten."

"Fine," he says. "I'll be here."

She nods, but still stands in place. Her eyes are glassy, red, swimming in water. She's preparing for the plunge back out into the world, and he knows she's scared out of her mind. She has a right to be, and he's said nothing, just like all the times before, so he reaches out to her before he can really tell himself not to and takes her hand in his.

Her fingers clutch around his, squeezing lightly. She's there, he thinks. Somewhere underneath all her armor is the girl that he knew, the one that he spent all his time chasing in a fevered attempt at hate. He doesn't know where that drive went, for either of them, but he knows it's still there, sputtering in fits and starts.

He feels the palm of her hand cold on his, a gesture, a reassurance, their own private dawn. Then she slips out of his grasp and is gone.


End file.
